


River's Song

by Mogseltof



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, mentions ensemble characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3123377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mogseltof/pseuds/Mogseltof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Upload of an old piece; back when I thought this kind of thing was edgy.</p><p>A reflective piece from River's point of view. Post-Miranda. Concerning all crew members!</p>
            </blockquote>





	River's Song

**Author's Note:**

> This is old, and my writing style has drastically changed since, but I never actually posted it and I want to. (Be gentle with me!)

  
River could still remember the life of clarity she’d had before hand. People had seemed slower and stupider back then, but looking back she’d take stupid and  _nice_  and  _quiet_  over the cacophony she had these days. Sometimes, when it all got too much, when everyone was thinking, and wouldn’t stop thinking, because they were all thinking so  _loudly_  because emotions were taking over and charge and they all became eddying streams and hotbeds of whirlpools of conflicting and cruel thoughts and daggers of the mind never spoken yet always directed, always begrudged or held or spiked against the target –  


When it all got too much she’d try to sink back. Her memories became sanctuaries, little pools of calm. If she directed all of her focus (and these days she had a lot of it, if she could fully immerse herself) into the memory, into bringing it up and alive and fresh in her head then she could drown everyone else out and just…

Sit.

  
She avoided memories of the schoolhouse of her younger years since  _Miranda_. No sense in raising old ghosts and terrors when she was trying not to scream. She was still a girl, and sometimes they forgot that.  


  
Simon still saw her as his  _mei-mei_ , fragile, young dancer who would tease him but preferred poetry to fists, philosophical debate to violence.  


Kaylee tried, she really did, but she treated River like Simon did (only to an extent thank goodness), but worse still, she treated her as someone who… wasn’t entirely there.

  
Which was of course the opposite of the issue. Humans aren’t  _meant_  to be entirely there, they were meant to be able to filter out the  _pi gu_  that made up their world and the people around them so that they could get on through. The problem River had was that she was  _entirely_  there, and altogether too much of entirely altogether too much of the time.  


  
Jayne had initially ignored her,  _stupid little girl_ , but now treated her like a faulty grenade where he wasn’t quite sure if the pin was still in it – something to be gotten as far away from as quickly as possible. ( _dangerdangerdanger_ )  


  
Wash had just treated her like a person. A smaller person and occasionally a child, but still a person. River had fits sometimes, trying to use reflexes that no longer existed to block out the wave of sadness that could not be avoided. It was why she’d stayed far away from Zoe for such a long time after  _Miranda_.  


  
Zoe had kept her distance with cool regard, always following the Captain’s lead – her heart never ruled her head for which River was eminently thankful, except for that one time when  _sadness breaks_.  


  
The Shepard had been nice to her always, always the mentor, but sometimes ( _in·tro·spec·tion[in-truh-spek-shuh_ _n] noun 1. observation or examination of one's own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc.; the act of looking within oneself._ ) he scared her with the dark.   


Inara had always observed, never really interacted, too full of sharpness and disguise for the Captain to worry about the stream that flowed around her, though she was always kind she was distant – though in a different way to Zoe – acting more like Kaylee.

  
The Captain ( _Mal – suffix, latin, ‘bad’_ ) he understood now – though not then. Then she was a girl, an object, a danger,  _liability_ , too young, too batty, too crazy, too much, too little, too Simon, too female, too Core, too  _dangerous_. Then there was clarity –   _little albatross won’ be hung round_   ** _my_**   _neck_  – prompted by rebellion but a catalyst for understanding nonetheless. He understood he let her go where she was needed he knew that sometimes it was altogether too  _much_ —  


These weren’t calm memories. But somehow they absorbed all her focus and took away the danger of exploding all the same. Odd, how the thoughts of the people of her home consumed her completely like that.

“Missy Pilot you’re needed in the pilot’s chair – not the rear port compartment. Soon ‘nuff we’re gonna have cargo for that little spot, so you migh’ wanta shift your nest.”

  
Her eyes are open but the darkness behind the lids is still there, with the pinpricks of light –  _stars behind your eyes_  – speckling her field of view. There is the grinding of metal on metal and the stars shift, falling into a shaft of light that spreads across her face.  


“You are perpendicular to an incorrect horizon,” she remarks to Mal, who is holding back a smile with a twitch. “Please return to your initially vertical position.”

“You’re the one who’s upside down,” Mal says reasonably. “And that can’t be a happy place for your back, River.”

  
He uses her name to ground her, and she is suddenly aware that the blood is rushing to her – to  _my_  head, my hair creating a thin, wispy curtain around my face as it all falls out of the loose, unfastened braid I let Kaylee put it in. I shuffle around awkwardly and step out of the compartment in a fluid movement, righting myself and the world around me. The only thing that still stays the same is the Captain, but he’s always been upside down against the odds and all else.  


Everything changes, but it all stays the same.

  


End file.
